+300,000 new claims a week for how many years is an upward economy? Majority of 'new' jobs are part time not full. Rate of workforce population growth is far outstripping jobs. Last months employment report was awful. NSA full time jobs decreased by 500,000 and part time increased by 1.2 million. The economy is stagnant and isn't degrading because the Fed keeps rate forced down and is in QEinfinity mode. The federal govt is the leading backer of loans (even though it is $16.2 Trillion in debt). One little hiccup and the whole thing falls apart.

I know +300,000 is a nice scary number to throw at people in an election year, but that number is not particularly scary. Over the last 40 years, weekly unemployment claims have only been under 300,000 about 8% of the time. Under 300,000 simply isn't normal.

It's scarier when you consider how so many people are already without jobs and companies have gone to extreme lengths to create lean work forces through significant job cuts over the past few years. You would think this number would be much lower in a healthy economy given the economic landscape. Plus the number is actually closer to 400,000, but I would see your point if the aforementioned weren't true.

"It's scarier when you consider how so many people are already without jobs"

This is really the issue. In a thriving economy, you could have 400k+ unemployment claims, if the economy were going through structural changes as part of growth. For instance, people making typewriters are laid off, but find work a week later for more money in a position related to computers.

The fear in this environment, is that you don't have NFP at 450k+, so the worry is that the people being unemployed are going to stay that way or find a job that was worse than the one they had.

Still nothing here to suggest people will be going back to work fast enough with really good jobs that will cause real estate to rebound fast enough that will improve the collateral value of loans on bank balance sheets. As such, bank capital will stay constrained, and lending tepid.

Can new ADP numbers be believed? Here's what I see: ADP changes their methodology so that numbers last month are revised lower (almost 50%). Numbers this month are double what analysts expected, under the old methodology. Trend manipulation? This is a joke.